ApiJect Systems America Announces Appointment of Rajesh J. Asarpota as Chief Financial Officer

STAMFORD, Conn., Sept. 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ApiJect Systems America, Inc., a medical technology company that seeks to revolutionize how medicines and vaccines are filled, finished and delivered, announced today that Rajesh (Raj) J. Asarpota has joined the organization as its new Chief Financial Officer. This appointment took effect on Monday, September 7, 2020.

Mr. Asarpota joins ApiJect after his most recent role as Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer with NuVasive, a global public company that is a leader in minimally invasive, procedurally integrated spine solutions, where he was involved with supporting the company's growth strategy through innovation and driving increased profitability with operating excellence. Prior to that he spent 2 years in the private equity space at Imaging Advantage as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer which was acquired by Envision in 2015 and at Cole Parmer as COO and CFO. In 2014, he served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Questcor Pharmaceuticals which was acquired by Mallinckrodt in a $5.6B transaction. Mr. Asarpota also spent a decade at Life Technologies, a global Life Sciences company where he was responsible for helping scale the company with a commercial turnaround, driving growth through organic and M&A channels. During his tenure, the company revenue grew from ~$1B in 2014 to $4B+, leading to the company's sale to Thermo Fisher for $16 billion in 2013.

Mr. Asarpota assumes responsibilities from Peter Stone, who served as ApiJect's Acting Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Stone continues at ApiJect in his role as Head of M&A and Executive Vice President.

In welcoming Raj to the ApiJect team, Franco Negron, ApiJect's Chief Executive Officer, commented: "Raj comes to us with a wide range of accomplishments in financial management and corporate governance in pharma-related and health solutions industries. He is an innovative thinker who combines a visionary, mission-driven approach with many years of real-world industry and business leadership. He will fit in seamlessly with our senior management team that combines expertise in their functions and a vast bio-pharma experience."

Mr. Asarpota commented: "ApiJect's role in the battle against COVID-19 puts it at the center of the most vital health challenge of our time. I'm excited and honored to partner with the talented and experienced team that Franco and our Chairman and co-founder, Jay Walker, and co-founder Marc Koska have put together over the past several years. I know that Jay and Marc were not anticipating a global pandemic when they started ApiJect three years ago. But their vision of a company to lead a global transformation of a safe and cost-effective injection technology platform has enabled ApiJect to swiftly answer our nation's call to join a united industry effort to turn the tide against COVID-19, and to bring the benefits of prefilled single-dose injection to a range of longer-term world-wide pharmaceutical uses, including branded and generic pharmaceuticals."

ABOUT APIJECT SYSTEMS AMERICA

ApiJect Systems America, Inc., is a medical technology company that seeks to change how the pharmaceutical industry fills, finishes, and delivers medicines and vaccines. Its manufacturing platform is centered around Blow-Fill-Seal technology, or BFS for short. BFS is an FDA-recognized advanced aseptic drug packaging technology. The ApiJect platform allows health care workers in the field to combine BFS prefilled containers with pen needle-style hubs. The medical professional simply has to twist the ApiJect Needle Hub onto the BFS container prefilled with a precise dose of a drug or vaccine to create a simple, safe and convenient-to-use prefilled injector.

The ApiJect team is led by a seasoned group of senior employees in pharma management, operations, engineering, production, quality and sales.

By creating a domestic and global network that uses high-speed, high-volume BFS medical grade plastics technology and an interlocking Needle Hub, the ApiJect platform can supply billions of ready-to-use prefilled injectors. ApiJect, along with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is a founding member of the RAPID Consortium, a public-private partnership dedicated to giving the U.S. and the world the surge drug packaging capacity it needs for addressing future pandemics and bio-emergencies.

ApiJect was awarded a $138 million contract from the Department of Defense, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to create the domestic capacity to supply 100 million prefilled injectors by year's end, as COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics become available through the government's Operation Warp Speed – a partnership between federal agencies and the private sector focused on accelerating the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. The U.S.-based capacity ApiJect is building aims to provide approximately 45 million prefilled injectors per month to America's population through 2021. Learn more about ApiJect at www.apiject.com.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included in these materials that address activities, events or developments that ApiJect expects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. The words "believe", "expect", "may", "estimates", "will", "anticipate", "plan", "intend", "foresee", "should", "would", "could", or other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, which are generally not historical in nature. However, the absence of these words does not mean that the statements are not forward looking. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, forward-looking statement contained in this press release specifically include the expectations of plans, strategies, and objectives of ApiJect. Such statements are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of ApiJect, which may cause actual results to differ materially from those implied or expressed by the forward-looking statements.

SOURCE ApiJect Systems Corp.